10 December 2014

As well as all our project activity, over the past few weeks we've enjoyed a number of visits from industry practitioners and supporters of the course.

Back in November, Michael Heins from Lewis came in and did a talk (which you can read about here), and we also had a visit from Terry Smith, a designer at Peach in Glasgow, who graduated in 2012 and is a recent recruit to our 'Design Buddy' scheme. Terry brought in three years' worth of sketchbooks for our archive and shared some of his thoughts on design with our NC group.

Terry Smith juggling his sketchbooks.

More recently Prof. Keith McIntyre, the Reader in Visual Art and Interdisciplinary Practices at Northumbria University was visiting the Dept and dropped into the studio to see what we were doing. We also had day-long visit from Garry Kane, a designer at Storm Ideas, an offshoot of the award-winning Leith-based digital agency Storm ID, who specialise in viral marketing and experimental social media strategies.

Garry Kane offering some advice in the studio.

Garry graduated HND Interactive Design in 2010, and prior to Storm Ideas, was part of the design team at the Union, (coincidentally, alongside Terry Smith) and worked on digital campaigns for some of Scotland's top brands. He presented his portfolio and talked about the relationship between digital design and front-end development, and how he has managed to bridge that gap in his own career.

Also in for a short visit and a spot of lunch was Mike Donoghue, whose experience in marketing and advertising has included stints at Saachti & Saatchi, WWAV Rapp Collins, and most recently, StoryUK. Mike has been a long-time supporter of the course, but this was the first time he had actually visited the college to see the studio and meet students whilst they worked.